


Anna and the Beanstalk

by FennelFox



Category: Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms, Jack and the Beanstalk (Fairy Tale)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-16
Updated: 2019-02-16
Packaged: 2019-10-29 21:23:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17815760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FennelFox/pseuds/FennelFox
Summary: Anna tried her best to raise her foolish, lazy son well. When a drought came and her garden died, she asked him to sell their only cow for a good price so that they could buy some food, but...





	Anna and the Beanstalk

Once upon a time there was a poor widow named Anna, who had nothing in the world except a small cottage on a small plot of land, a cow named Buttercream, and a son named Jack. Jack was a strapping young man who refused to farm, or herd, or hunt, or otherwise work. By the laws of the time, women who had close male relations couldn’t own land or houses, so her cottage had become the property of her husband when she married, and passed to her son when he died. Unable to turn him out, Anna worked herself to exhaustion trying to sustain them both, and she barely scraped enough to keep body and soul together by the milk Buttercream produced. 

Unfortunately, a heavy, dark cloud came and with it came drought, for although it constantly threatened to rain, it never did. The little kitchen-garden dried up, and so did the pasture, and at last valiant Buttercream stopped producing milk. Anna wept bitterly because she had no way to sustain herself and her lazy son, and because Buttercream was the last creature she loved in the world. However, she soon realized there was no way out of the desperate situation, and asked Jack to take Buttercream to the market to sell. Going to the market was the one thing Jack would do, because he could flirt with the women there and flash little coins around, pretending to be wealthy.

So Jack took Buttercream by the halter and dragged her down the road. Anna wept as she cleaned out the little barn. She consoled herself with the thought that they might be able to afford some chicks in addition to food. If the chickens laid well enough and if she could grow some vegetables soon (she eyed the cloud overhead hopefully) perhaps she would be able to buy Buttercream back.

Jack returned much faster than she expected, with a shining face and a spring in his step.  “Mother!” he exclaimed, “You’ll never guess how much I sold that old cow for?”

“Oh? Five pieces of gold?”

“Gold! Oh no, something much better.” And he opened his hand and showed her a shriveled little bean. As she gaped at it, he went on, “It’s a magic bean! An old man told me to plant it and it will lead me to everything I deserve—”

A wave of fury washed over Anna, and she snatched the bean out of Jack’s hand and threw it out the window, shouting things she thought she would never, ever say, all the venomous things that had built up in her heart over the years of struggling to keep them both fed.

They went to bed that night, both hungry, neither talking. 

The next morning, Anna woke remembering that there was no Buttercream, no garden, and no hope. She turned over, trying to ignore the hollowness in her belly and her heart. When she finally rose, Jack was gone, and out the window what did she see but a giant beanstalk, stretching up into the clouds! Even better, on the stalk were huge bean pods. The beans inside it were so big that half of one was enough to fill her stomach, and it tasted as rich as if she were eating a hearty meat stew. 

Later that day, a bag of gold dropped into their garden, nearly braining her as she pulled up the withered plants. Jack climbed hastily down the beanstalk after it. “Well, Mother, how do you like your ne'er-do-well son now? We’ll be rich after all!”

“Where did you get this gold?” she asked, but Jack grinned smugly and would not say. Anna trembled to have so much gold in the house, for they were more likely to attract the attention of robbers than get anything useful out of it. 

The next day, Jack went to the market and came home in new clothes that were as useless as they were beautiful. He threw his poor mother a loaf of good bread and a small wheel of cheese, and said, “There, now don’t say I never did anything for you!”

“But Jack,” she gasped. “What happened to the rest of the gold?”

“What do you care? It was mine to do with as I pleased. I’ll go get some more tomorrow.” 

The next day, Jack climbed up the beanstalk again, although Anna begged him not to go. As she sat in the light outside her cottage mending some old clothes and fretting over Jack’s reckless obsession, a shadow fell over her work. She glanced up and jumped involuntarily at the sight of three tough-looking strangers with wide, false, pleasant smiles pasted on.

“Excuse me, madam,” said the largest, who had a knife scar down one cheek, “We have come to have a small word with your son Jack.”

Anna clutched her skirt and said equally politely, “I’m afraid my son is not at home at present.”

“Now that’s a shame,” said the stranger, glancing at the other two who flanked him. Their faces split into grins, and they chuckled. “Jack owes us some money, and I’m afraid we’ve come to collect from him. Gambling debts, you know.”

Anna could think of nothing to say, except, “Gambling? He said he was in the market…”

“Yes, he joined a little dice game. Wagered more than he had and told us he’d have the money today. We don’t know him, you see, being a new face to the game…So, we’ll just be needing to have a little look around in your cottage.”

The scary one on the left drew a knife and smiled at her sunnily. The leader, as Anna thought of him, glanced his way, then back at her. “I really would not recommend that you object, madam,” he said, and opened the door and walked into the cottage. The other two followed him, the one with the knife eyeing her over his shoulder, almost regretfully.

Anna set her mending down, stood up slowly, knees shaking. What would they do when they found there was nothing inside? She walked slowly down to the Buttercream’s old barn and shut the door behind her, then climbed out the windows on the other side, closed the shutters behind her, and bolted into the forest as fast as she could.

When she cautiously crept home after evening had fallen, everything in the tiny cottage lay in disarray. Her milk crock had been smashed. The straw mattresses had been cut and the straw scattered everywhere. The quilt that she had made of bright fabric during the early days of her marriage had been ripped and slashed. Nothing had been left untouched, and the one piece of ancient silver she had left, which she had carefully hidden from even her own son, was missing. They had poured water on the fire and scraped the wet, black ash out of the hearth, and tracked it everywhere.

That night, as she sat red-eyed and stunned among the ruin, Jack burst into the cottage with a chicken. “What happened?!” he exclaimed, and she told him. His face grew red with anger. “And you didn’t stop them? Coward! But never mind. Look what I’ve got this time!” He slammed the chicken on the table so roughly it squawked. “Lay!” he commanded, and it laid a golden egg. 

Again, he wouldn’t tell Anna where he had gotten the chicken. He would not say anything except “Lay!”, which he said so often that on the third day, the chicken died of exhaustion and malnourishment.

This put him in a foul mood, and he snarled “Don’t even think of touching these,” as he gathered up the eggs, and stormed out of the cottage. Anna mutely cradled the poor chicken and debated whether she should try to eat it or if she should bury it in apology. She decided on the latter even though her stomach growled at the thought of meat, and as she laid it in a little grave, the dead chicken laid one more egg. When she picked it up, the old woman noticed that it was not as heavy and not as golden as the other eggs, and she slipped it gently into her pocket. 

That night, Jack came home from the market drunk and mean. Anna left the cottage without a word, and went to sleep curled up in the hay in the little barn. She dreamt of Buttercream and woke smiling. It had been so long since she had smiled, she felt like her face was cracking. 

After watching Jack shimmy up the beanstalk again, she stood at the base of it and thought hard about all of the things that had happened, and all of the things that could yet happen. Then she got her axe. As she made the first cut, she heard from far above her a desperate, golden voice cry, “Master, help! I am being stolen!” and a roar of fury as if from a giant. 

As she made the second cut, the golden voice begged, “Please, please put me back!” 

Anna scowled, and made the third cut with all of the fury left in her heart. As the beanstalk fell, it ripped a hole in the clouds, and a gentle rain at last started to fall. Anna looked up, and high above her, she saw Jack appear, clutching a beautiful harp with a golden woman on it. The harp seemed to be weeping tiny drops of gold that fell at Anna’s feet. 

“Mother! Why?” Jack gasped, and she made no answer; just stared back at him sadly as an enormous hand grabbed him back from the edge of the cloud. She heard him scream, a sound that cut her heart. Then his body landed in the garden. 

Anna didn’t look at him; just quietly walked away to fetch the provost and the priest. “I believe he stole from the wrong person,” she told them quite honestly in answer to their appalled looks, when they came to collect his body. The provost looked at the remains of the beanstalk, but having no interest in farming or plants, seemed to take it for a strange kind of tree.

And then she was alone. She gathered up huge beans and tiny golden teardrops. She took the little gold-speckled egg out of the bodice her dress where she had been keeping it warm, and made it a nest by the hearth. Her friends brought her condolences and what food they could spare, and if the words were empty of sorrow, they were full of love.

With only herself to support, she was able to eat well enough for the first time in a long while. She sold the golden teardrops for a small amount to a dressmaker who wanted them for beads. She bought seeds and some chicks, and planted her ruined garden again. The little gold-speckled egg hatched into a beautiful chicken that laid especially large and delicious eggs. She planted one of the enormous beans from the beanstalk a little warily, prepared to chop it down at the first sign it planned to grow as wide as a tree or as tall as the clouds. But to her astonishment, the one bean popped up as a score of regular-sized beanstalks, that grew vigorously and merrily produced beans about the size of the tip of her thumb, with the same rich, full flavor as the parent stalk. These in particular fetched a high price at market, and people from the nearest town began traveling especially to buy them from her.

At last, one day after her pasture had again turned lush and green, an old man appeared, leading a glossy Buttercream by a leather halter with opals and sapphires stitched onto it. “Excuse me, madam,” he said. “For the price of a bean, I will sell you this excellent cow…”  
Laughing, Anna fetched the last huge bean and gave it to him. 

With the money from the eggs from her chicken, the milk from her cow, and some exceptionally delicious normal-sized beans that had grown from one of the beanstalk's beans, Anna was eventually able to earn enough to live in comfort to the end of her days.


End file.
